#link to source ty to this sweet girl for providing the goods

[kaleidoscopeminds]

x

[sensitivefern]

MEMORIAL SERVICE

Where is the grave-yard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian... But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter to-day? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year – and it is no more than five hundred years ago – 50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him... Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried on with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human blood. But to-day Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of General Coxey, Richmond P. Hobson, Nan Patterson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey.

Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother, Tezcatilpoca. Tezcatilpoca was almost as powerful: he consumed 25,000 virgins a year. Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a couronne des perles. But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quitzalcoatl is? Or Tialoc? Or Chalchihuitlicue? Or Xiehtecutli? Or Centeotl, that sweet one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Or Mictlan? Or Ixtlilton? Or Omacatl? Or Yacatecutli? Or Mixcoatl? Or Xipe? Or all the host of Tzitzimitles? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of hell do they await the resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, whom Caesar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Or that of Tarves, the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or that of Mullo, the celestial jack-ass? There was a time when the Irish revered all these gods as violently as they now hate the English. But to-day even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them. [...] You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: you will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignity – gods of civilized peoples – worshipped and believed in by millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient and immortal. And all are dead.

[H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, Third Series]

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EDITOR’S NOTE

‘Do you know Bartram’s “Travels”? Treats of Florida chiefly, has a wonderful kind of floundering eloquence in it; and has grown immeasurably old. All American libraries ought to provide themselves with that kind of book; and keep them as a future biblical article’. So wrote Carlyle to Emerson of the volume which is here reprinted. It was first published in Philadelphia in 1791, and the next year appeared in London, where Coleridge read it as early... as 1794. Coleridge was indebted to it... Later in his life he called it the last book ‘written in the spirit of the old travellers’. It was also an important source for Wordsworth...

[Travels of William Bartram]

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In 1872... Charles Abbott, a New Jersey physician... found some arrowheads, scrapers, and axheads on his farm in the Delaware Valley. Because the artifacts were crudely made, Abbott believed that they must have been fashioned not by historical Indians but by some earlier, ‘ruder’ group, modern Indians’ long-ago ancestors. He consulted a Harvard geologist, who told him that the gravel around the finds was ten thousand years old, which Abbott regarded as proof that Pleistocene Man had lived in New Jersey at least that far in the past. Indeed, he argued, Pleistocene Man had lived in New Jersey for so many millennia that he had probably evolved there. If modern Indians had migrated from Asia, Abbott said, they must have ‘driven away’ these original inhabitants. Egged on by his proselytizing, other weekend bone hunters soon found similar sites with similar crude artifacts. By 1890 amateur scientists claimed to have found traces of Pleistocene Americans in new Jersey, Indiana, Ohio, and the suburbs of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Unsurprisingly, Christian leaders rejected Abbott’s claims, which... contradicted both Ussher’s chronology and the theologically convenient Lost Tribes theory. More puzzling, at least to contemporary eyes, was the equally vehement objections voiced by professional archaeologists and anthropologists, especially those at The Smithsonian Institution...

[1491]

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Ezra Pound, as I had heard in New York, had been visiting here without publicity. They had dressed him in a gown at the Hamilton commencement, and he had received a tremendous ovation. His policy now is not to speak but to maintain a polite silence... except to say, when asked whether he would have light meat or dark meat, ‘Just as it comes’... [...] 4th of July. Hardly a firecracker, no celebration. Tamest, blankest 4th I’ve ever known. Rosalind and I tried to find some excitement by driving to Cape Vincent. No traffic to speak of, the town itself dull... Movies: Funny Girl, Love Bug – both pretty terrible, but I had the interest of watching their reactions, which are exactly what the Hollywood people count on.

[Edmund Wilson]

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timothy | Phleum pratense Distinctive to timothy are its bulbous corms (sometimes called haplocorms) – swollen, thickened areas of the subsurface stem that store carbohydrates, enabling the plants to survive winter. [...] Timothy leaves, flat, about 1/4 inch wide and 4 to 12 inches long, taper to a fine point. Cilia... fringe the leaf margins. The topmost or flag leaf, beneath the flower spike and shorter than the others, extends upward alongside the stem. [...] Found growing by one John Herd near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, about 1711... timothy probably first arrived from England as a contaminant in hay, litter, and ship’s ballast. The grass... was early promoted as a good hay and pasture resource by farmer Timothy Hanson. (Benjamin Franklin was the first recorded user of the name timothy in a 1747 letter, recognizing a herd grass sample sent to him as ‘mere timothy’...) [...] Timothy provides a frequently used cover for land rehabilitation and erosion control after clear-cutting, burning, overgrazing, or construction of highways, railroads, and canals.

[The Book of Field and Roadside]

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Alchemilla conjuncta ‘This neat, clump-forming perennial bears frothy clusters of tiny yellow-green flowers from early summer to early autumn’... it obligingly sows itself into paving cracks and in that area beneath your antique ‘garden seat’... produces fertile seed by asexual reproduction – ‘a useful characteristic if the \viral threat to the world’s honeybee population continues to grow apace’... sun-shade; tolerates some droughtiness... keeps long as a cut flower... zones 3-9... particularly perky after a rain shower...

[Green Flowers]

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Groundcovers look good when their natural habit is emphasized and they are encouraged to spill down the sides of a berm and onto the flat ground below, tying the mound to its site. I have done this with ophiopogon, a grasslike perennial that likes shade, with bugleweed, and with succulents... The groundcover flows as though it is being poured over the berm – running down in rivulets or wide streams, while not completely covering the area. If they contrast well enough, mix streams of groundcovers; the bright yellow-green licorice plant (helichrysum petiolatum ‘Limelight’) and the dark green Irish moss (Sagina subulata), for instance, work well.

[Jeff Cox]

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May 25 [1855]. Critchicrotches in prime. Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since. [One in the evening.] [...] The golden robin keeps whistling something like *Eat it, Potter, eat it!’

[Thoreau, Journal]

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